But the fad continued to grow and grow, and we began to fear that soon there would be no place free of cupcakes. The appearance of the spaghetti-and-meatball cupcake seemed like a sign from heaven that we would soon be eating nothing but cupcakes.

And, as the illustration to the left demonstrates, the cupcakes themselves are growing. This ad, which appeared in a Sky Mall catalog (that's the glossy publication that nestles between the vomit bag and the escape chart in the pouch attached to the seat in front of you) encourages you to buy a cake pan shaped like a cupcake so that you can make a cupcake as big as a cake, suggesting that all cakes may soon become cupcakes.

Actually, it's two pans. One for the cake part of the cupcake, the other for the dome of cake that stands in for frosting. And then you're supposed to put frosting on top of the dome. Of course, if you just made the top part of the giant cupcake all frosting, then it really would be like a cupcake, which brings us back to one of Sarah's original objections: too damn much frosting!